


Mrs. Norris Stalks the Halls Alone

by tehfanglyfish



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-22 05:54:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17054405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tehfanglyfish/pseuds/tehfanglyfish
Summary: A chance midnight encounter changes Hogwarts forever.Originally written in 2008 and posted on my now-defunct LJDisclaimer: I do not own Argus Filch, Sybil Trelawney, Mrs. Norris, or Harry Potter.  They all belong to J.K. Rowling.  I am not making any money from this.





	Mrs. Norris Stalks the Halls Alone

It was a random midnight encounter that brought them together. Sybil Trelawney’s late-night crystal gazing had revealed a trip to the kitchens for extra treacle tart was in her future. Knowing that it was unwise to resist what the fates had laid out for her, Sybil left her tower to seek out her predicted snack. Her journey through the castle had in turn gained the attention of the prowling Mrs. Norris who alerted the caretaker Argus Filch. Filch, hoping to find a troublesome student out of bed, sprinted in Trelawney’s direction.

The pair collided into one another. Trelawney’s shawls fell off her shoulders. Filch dropped his lantern. A few brief awkward seconds passed as both Filch and Trelawney processed what had occurred. And then their eyes met. And they connected. There was no need for either to speak. Sybil, seeing Filch through her oversized glasses, instantly comprehended the pain that Argus felt from being a squib, spending his days as the Hogwarts caretaker suffering constant ridicule from cruel students and patronizing comments from the school’s faculty. Argus, on the other hand, realized Sybil’s shame and frustration at her lack of accurate predictions. In that instant two awkward, misunderstood people came together.

Just as their eyes had met, so too did their lips. At first it was a graceless and clumsy encounter. (In fact, it was later revealed that neither had ever done such a thing before.) There was confusion about where tongues, teeth, noses, and hands should go. Soon enough, though, they had figured the process out and, after pausing to breathe, decided to relocate to Sybil’s quarters in order to avoid uncomfortable confrontations with the rest of the Hogwarts community. 

In the weeks that followed, students and teachers alike noticed changes around Hogwarts. The castle’s overall upkeep had vastly improved, while the temperature in the divination classroom had fallen to more bearable levels. Students whose misbehavior might have once earned them a week’s worth of detention from Filch now received verbal warnings. Trelawney’s in-class predictions no longer centered on death and suffering. She now claimed to see her students finding true love and happiness, as well as producing children in numbers that would put a Weasley to shame. Mrs. Norris increasingly prowled the castle’s corridors alone, eventually giving up on discovering sneaking students to spend her time in the company of Fang the dog. It became a mystery to most everyone in the school as to where Filch was spending his evenings, though students accepted his absence as fortuitous and best not questioned. Faculty, enjoying their own uninterrupted nighttime forays to the kitchens, ultimately decided against implementing a magical alarm system. Filch’s nocturnal disappearance changed life for pretty much everyone at Hogwarts. Sybil Trelawney knew exactly where to find Argus at night, but she had no intention of volunteering such information.

No one quite knew what to make of these changes, let alone what had precipitated them. The overall improvements left students and staff ready to simply accept them at face value rather than to ask questions they probably didn’t really want answered anyway. Filch never did possess an ounce of magic and Trelawney’s total number of real predictions held steadily at two, but that no longer mattered. Sybil and Argus had found each other, and that was enough for both of them.


End file.
